Eating Close to Home

Feels like summer may have finally arrived.  The peas and greens had a very good run this year, but we picked the last of the peas and sent the vines to the compost pile.  We've been eating snow peas until they are coming out our ears, fresh, in stir fries, in salads and most my favorite, briefly sauteed in butter, the drizzled with a bit of honey and a sprinkle of salt.  On good days, we'd add a handful of thinly sliced carrot to the mix.

We grew collards for the first time and enjoyed them sauteed in a little olive oil, then dashed with sesame oil and garnished with toasted sesame seeds.  This is how we were introduced to them in Brazil and it is still my favorite way to enjoy them.

We enjoyed a lot of salads as we had a bumper crop of mache which we combined with Oregon Dungeness crab and a light citrus dressing.  The Mache was followed by Napa Cabbage that turned out to be Bok Choi, and a second batch that was actually Napa Cabbage, but really got pounded by the bugs and slugs.

While the slugs were busy gorging on cabbage, we had a nice crop of lettuce, including butter, romaine and red oak leaf, plus a nice patch of mixed baby greens.  The lettuce in our home garden is gone, but we are still enjoying and sharing lettuce from our plot at Midnight Gardens Daylily Nursery.  We also have a nice batch of artichokes and chicory from Rome Italy growing  there along with a very assertive horse radish.

Our friend Robert Anderson owns and operate Midnight Garden Daylilies and has taken pity on our citified condition and shared a fallow plot with us.  It's always a lot of fun gardening over there whether we're looking at the newest day lily seedlings in his hybridization program or sitting on the back porch sipping a local Pinot Noir after a hot day in the sun (ok, I'm exaggerating a little as we haven't really had any hot days in the sun this year, but with a sweatshirt you can pretend)

The green beans and edamame are off to a good start and we've planted some tomatoes and peppers in a leap of faith that we might get a few before fall sets in.  With any luck we'll have tomatillos to add to our onions and peppers (again with the hopeful thinking) and we can make a few batches of salsa verde for the freezer.

Next weekend looks like a good candidate for making pickled beets as our spring crop is ready for harvest.  Hope your gardens are doing well and if you aren't fortunate to have one, that you have gardening friends or a good farmer's market nearby.